1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to digital data storage, and more particularly, to high capacity digital data storage by transmission of radiant energy through arrays of small diameter holes.
2. Prior Art
Compact Discs (CD's) and Digital Versatile Disks (DVD's) have been developed to increase the amount of data that can be stored on a storage medium. These types of storage medium have data written on them in the form of pits and lands that are written and read with lasers along a track. Generally, the track is helical in shape and each pass of the track is separated from adjacent passes of the track by a track pitch. A standard single sided CD can store approximately 800 Megabytes of data, while a double-sided CD can store 1600 Megabytes of data. A DVD, has a track pitch of about 0.74 microns and a single side/single layer DVD can store about 4.4 Gigabytes of data, which is roughly equivalent to about 2 hours of movie playing time.
Therefore, movies and other types of digital content cannot fit on a CD and can very easily be too large to even fit on a DVD. Furthermore, with the advent of certain technologies and business plans for the distribution of “content”, it may be advantageous to store a library of digital content, such as movies, on a single removable storage medium. Current CD's and DVD's cannot be used for such purposes.